Truthseeker

Twenty

Boston’s streets were unimaginably loud after a single day in the Barrow-lands. Lara stood on the tiny balcony that Kelly’s apartment sported, red and white lights of traffic blurring in her tired vision. The day had disappeared into reuniting with her mother, whose disbelief and relief at Lara’s return had led, for the second time, to the telling of where she’d been. The second and, Lara expected, the last: no one else would accept the truth for what it was.

She had more than half imagined her mother would tell a story of some old family legend, a story of some ancestor who claimed she’d been stolen away to fairyland, and had borne a child to an elfin lover. It would be the sort of tale Gretchen Jansen would never have told her truth-sensing daughter for fear of upsetting her in the same way stories of Santa Claus had.

But there had been no such story, nothing to laugh or wonder over. If such a thing had ever happened, it was long lost to history, but Lara thought it more likely that Emyr and Dafydd were right: that her magic was only human, and all the more unique for it.

Gretchen had reluctantly returned home as night fell, leaving Lara both glad to have seen her and utterly exhausted. There would be more of the same tomorrow and, she feared, for days to come: she hadn’t even yet been to Lord Matthew’s, much less to the police. Sharing her story with her mother and Kelly was by far the easiest of what she would face over the next several days. They knew her well enough to accept it, even in all its wondrous impossibility.

Her bones ached from weariness, and probably from having ridden horses and carried swords and flinging her armored self through a breach between worlds and landing hard in a sandbox. Despite tiredness she let out a rough laugh and leaned hard on the balcony’s iron fence. Sleep evaded her: the streets were too loud, or, more likely, her emotions were too high. She, who had spent a lifetime rooted in pedantic truth, who had never believed such a thing could happen, had become a time traveler, and was lost in both the awe and horror of that fact.

The clothes Kelly had kept for her had been tucked into boxes whose lids were dusty, and the tissue paper her jewelry had been wrapped in was fragile and creased with a year’s disuse. Proof, in small ways, that yesterday had been a long time ago.

And there were other matters to dwell on, too, if she let herself. Not just Dafydd’s imprisonment, but the history Ioan had hinted at. There’d been no mistruth in what he’d recounted, but she was unaccustomed to trying to sort history from legend. The way humans turned men into legends often rang false with her; she had no idea what the reality behind Robin Hood was, but no version of that story, passed off as history, had ever struck a true chord in her mind. By those lights, Unseelie legend might have been born of fact, which opened a window on a much larger landscape than she’d originally been asked to see.

She said, “Changes that will break the world,” to the street below. Ioan’s worldbreaking weapon nagged at her; if it was something she could find, or wield, it might help bring answers to light. But it was long lost, whatever it might have been. Or lost, at least, to the Barrow-lands; that was what Ioan had said. Lara’s gaze went unfocused, city horizon turning to a blur.

Lost to his world, and what better place to lose it than hers? They were linked, but only royalty could work the worldwalking spell, and if Emyr had cause to hide a weapon in her world, it would shed more light on why he was so displeased with Dafydd’s hundred-year sojourn across the breach.

“Lar?” The bedroom door opened, Kelly’s voice pitched just loud enough to carry. Lara waved from the balcony and Kelly came in to lean in its doorway. “I heard you talking. You okay?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Kelly made a face as she came out to the balcony. “Sorry. I lost the habit of not being sarcastic out loud.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been gone a long time, and you only ever had to do it with me.”

“But I’m probably a nicer person when I keep the snark on the inside.” Kelly peeked down at the street nervously, fingers knotted around the rail. “I never come out here.”

“I know. I don’t understand why you’re willing to spend an extra hundred dollars a month for an apartment with two balconies when you’re afraid of heights.”

“Hundred and fifty. Rent went up. But Dickon and I are moving in together soon, so it won’t matter.” Kelly gave the railing a tentative shake. “You could probably stay here, if you wanted. Move in, I mean, and have the place to yourself when we get married. It’d be easier than looking for a new place to live.”

Surprise cascaded through Lara like cold water pouring down her insides. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

Kelly chuckled and stepped back to the safety of the doorway. “Are you lying to me, Lara Jansen?”

Lara opened her mouth and shut it again, Kelly’s teasing jangling at her nerves. “Yes and no. If I had thought that far, I thought—”

“That you were going back to the Barrow-lands with David?”

“Yeah.” Truth, for once, wasn’t a comfort, drawing a note as discordant as lies under her skin. “And no, Kel. I can’t quite believe it’s been a year and a half. I can’t quite believe I won’t just get up and go to work in the morning. That my job’s not even there anymore, probably. It was just yesterday.”

“Wow,” Kelly breathed. “That must be really bizarre. Not believing, I mean. That must be like gravity stopped working.”

“Or like magic started.” Lara shook her head. “I have no idea how anybody lives with this level of uncertainty. I thought always knowing if something was true or false was hard, but this is worse. So beyond getting Dafydd out of jail, I just don’t know. I think they might need me, in Dafydd’s world, and I’m starting to think maybe there’s something I need to find here, in this one. And I don’t know what happens if I do. This is my home.” Lara sighed, pulling herself back from the larger scope of worries. “And this is a great apartment. It’d be a good place to move in to.”

“Plus that way I could leave as much stuff here as I wanted and just stop by to pick things up when I missed them,” Kelly said cheerfully.

Lara laughed. “But you’re only thinking of me, right?”

“I would never say that. You’d call me on the terrible lies in my voice.” Kelly reached for Lara’s elbow, pulling her back toward the door to hug her. “Look, it was just a thought, okay? You don’t have to make a decision right now. First things first. Get your weird-ass boyfriend out of jail, and we’ll figure out the next step after that.”

Lara grunted at the strength of Kelly’s hug and returned it just as hard. “Okay.”

“Ooh. I note she didn’t deny the ‘boyfriend’ part of that sentence.” Kelly waggled her eyebrows as Lara spluttered a protest, then pointed at the bed. “Get some sleep, Truthseeker. You’ve got an elf to rescue tomorrow.”

“I can’t do this.” Lara reached across the car—the same little blue Nissan she’d helped Kelly pick out barely a week ago in her memory and nearly a year and a half earlier in Kelly’s—and grasped Kelly’s wrist. “I can’t do this.”

Kelly pried Lara’s fingers off her wrist. “Your hands are freezing, Lara, jeez. And you have to do it, unless you want to let David rot in a jail cell for the rest of his life. How long do elves live, anyway?”

“Dafydd,” Lara whispered, correcting the hard American way Kelly said the name to the softer Seelie pronunciation. “They live forever.”

“Well, somebody’s going to notice if he lives forever in jail, so let’s go.”

“But look at them.”

Dozens of reporters crowded around the front door of Boston police headquarters. They were barred from entry by a couple of grumpy-looking cops, but mostly they didn’t appear to want to go inside. They were waiting, and Lara had a too-clear idea of what they were waiting for. “How could they even know I was here?”

Kelly’s eyebrows shifted upward. She killed the Nissan’s engine and took the keys out of the ignition before leaning on the steering wheel and pointing, with the keys, toward the crowd of cameramen and microphone-bearing press. “I can think of at least six different ways they found out. The woman you talked to in the park. The cabdriver. Either of them might have eventually recognized you from the news. And you said you called Cynthia. Or there’s Ruth, or me, or your mom. Hey!” She sat up, lifting her hands in a protestation of innocence. “I said I could think of six ways, not that they were all likely. I didn’t tell anybody, and I’m sure your mom didn’t, either. But Cynthia could’ve called the cops.”

“Cynthia didn’t believe it was me.”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t call the cops and somebody didn’t make a note of it. Look, Lara, I told you. You’re a news story. You’re going to have to face these people eventually. Might as well get it over with.”

“Would you be this phlegmatic if you were in my shoes?”

“Of course not, but all I’ve got to do is have your back, sister. Come on.” Kelly cracked her door open and elbowed Lara to do the same. “It’s only forty feet. How bad can it be?”

Lara, climbing out of the car, shot her friend a despairing glance. “That’s one of those questions you should never ask.”

Kelly’s apology was lost beneath a triumphant, “There she is!” from within the midst of the press corps. Dozens of faces turned her way, and Lara squeaked with dismay, fumbling for the Nissan’s door handle. Kelly, much bolder, all but slid across the car’s hood to grab Lara’s hand and pull her forward as reporters surged toward them.

“They’re not as bad as a dark elf army,” Kelly whispered. “Come on, you can do it.”

It hit Lara like a gong, like she was the gong, her chest reverberating with a truth so obvious it became understatement, and then became funny. A day earlier she’d ridden into actual battle, albeit reluctantly. A mob of men and women armed with cameras and microphones was nothing, in that context. Chin lifted, she stepped ahead of Kelly, meeting a tide of bodies and questions with a sudden calm that felt like arrogance.

Even with newfound determination, there were simply too many reporters, all pressing close and shoving microphones or cameras into Lara’s face. Questions made the air thick, shouts hurting Lara’s ears, but she set her jaw and pushed forward.

And hit a wall, jostling bodies vying for position and creating a deadlock. Even the battlefield hadn’t been quite like this: there, though they wanted to hold a line, the soldiers had also wanted a chance at their enemy, and had let people slip and step through so they could fight.

They might well still be fighting, that same battle not yet ended, given the radical differences in time’s passage between her world and Dafydd’s. If she could get through, if she could obtain Dafydd’s release, they might yet be able to make a difference in his world; might yet stop that fight before it became a genocide. Chords sounded in her mind, thunderous sounds that made truth of the possibility.

But the reporters wouldn’t make a path.

Lara drew breath and focused the pounding music in her mind into her voice, turning it to an answer for the most-oft asked question: “I was not kidnapped!”

Power burst in it, opening a passage through the mob. Lara surged forward, driven by Kelly’s hands in the small of her back. She stumbled into the small empty space at the police station doors and turned to face the press corps with indignation boiling through her.

For a few astonished seconds, they gaped in silence. Kelly lurched to her side, and the officers who’d been manning the doors stepped up to flank them.

“They believed you,” Kelly whispered. “Keep talking.”

Lara wasn’t certain at all that they’d believed her, but they had let her through, and had gone quiet, which was enough. A distant part of her found that interesting: typically she would have been deeply concerned about the truth, that it be accepted, but not now. She stared from face to face in the crowd, and just as the power of her voice started to wear off, she spoke again.

“David Kirwen and I are friends. I know I’ve been missing for months, but that wasn’t by his design.” Technically true: Dafydd’s intention had been to bring her back very close to the time she’d left. The language could be used to play fine notes, a tuning Lara had never cared for. No one else would hear the dissonance in the words in quite the way she did, though she could see many of the reporters latching on to her careful phrasing. A new wave of questions inundated her before she could say anything else. Exasperation reached its breaking point and snapped.

“Of course I don’t have Stockholm syndrome. How could I, when the man who supposedly kidnapped me has been in jail for the last year?”

Another silence, this one considering, seized the press corps for the briefest moment. Lara whipped around, her pride too great to let her actually run inside, though it was a near thing. Another barrage of questions rushed after her, and exasperation rose up a second time as she pulled the door open. “Yes,” she said over her shoulder, in response to something half-heard. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did disappear off the face of the earth. I’m sure that’ll be a very exciting mystery for you to solve. I have nothing more to say to you, not now and not ever.”

The door closed behind her, cutting off the inquisition. Lara let out an explosive breath that loosened her anger, and Kelly applauded. “That was impressive. You told them off and you told the truth.”

“Sometimes I amaze even myself,” Lara said without a hint of irony. She straightened her skirt—she’d gone shopping that morning, instinctively searching for a black suit skirt and a red silk blouse, and had thought nothing of it until Kelly’d looked at them and said, “Battle colors, eh?”

Caught out, Lara had almost exchanged the blouse for a blue one, but in the end had kept the red. She was preparing for battle, after all, though of a different sort than had seen her strap on moonlit armor. Confident she was presentable, she approached the front desk, where a stout officer in an ill-fitting uniform looked her up and down. “Yeah, I know who you are. Washington’ll be out in a minute.” He went so far as to pick up the phone and send a message to make certain that would happen, and Lara, feeling somehow chastised, retreated to wait on the detective’s arrival.

“I’ve never been in a police station before,” she whispered to Kelly. “Have you?”

“More than I’d like to think about, the last year and a half.” Kelly leaned against her for a hug.

Embarrassment flooded Lara’s chest. “Right.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. All’s well that ends well.” Kelly smiled, and Lara’s discomfort faded.

“Miss Jansen?” A tall, good-looking man in a suit—off the rack, Lara thought, but well-cut and long enough in the arm for his height—came through a side door and extended a hand to Lara. “I’m Detective Washington. I was assigned to your case last year. Kelly,” he added. “Good to see you again. How are the wedding plans going?”

“Better than they’ve ever been. I’ve got a maid of honor now.” Kelly, beaming, stood on her toes to kiss the detective’s cheek after he shook Lara’s hand.

“Congratulations. I hope I’m still invited.”

“Of course you are. We got to be friends,” Kelly said to Lara, more shyly than she’d admitted to being engaged. “Neither Dickon nor I would leave him alone. I wouldn’t give up hope and Dickon wouldn’t accept David was guilty.”

“And you were right. You have no idea how glad we all are to see you back safely, Ms. Jansen. Can you come this way?”

Lara looked between Washington and Kelly, her eyebrows lifting as a feeling of loss worked its way through her. A day, she thought. A day, and seventeen months. Her world had changed, even if she hadn’t. Or hadn’t much: her talent was stronger than it had been, but in comparison to the differences in Kelly’s life, that seemed like nothing. Lara murmured, “Sure,” and fell into step behind the detective.

He led them through a labyrinth of halls whose cream-colored paint was sallowed by aging fluorescent lights. A few officers smiled as they passed by; more nodded, and one or two did a double take, clearly recognizing Lara. “I feel like an exhibit,” she breathed to Kelly, but it was Washington who answered.

“Sorry for saying so, but in a way, you are. People don’t usually turn up after going missing for a year and a half.”

“Not usually,” Lara echoed. “But sometimes.” She stepped through a door Washington opened for her, looking back at him for an answer.

“Sometimes, yeah.” Washington gestured her to a desk in the midst of a dozen others, then looked apologetically at Kelly. “Sorry. I only have the one chair.”

She grinned. “I know. I’ve been in it often enough. I’ll go grab a cup of really bad vending machine coffee. Want me to bring some back for you?”

“If I give you five bucks will you go to Starbucks instead?” Washington reached for his wallet, but Kelly waved him off.

“My treat. Celebrating Lara’s return. You want anything, Lar?”

“An iced tea, please?”

“Will do. And try to remember everything you say, because I’m going to want all the details later.” Kelly winked and hurried off, leaving Lara feeling oddly fortified. She sat down, smiling, and Washington returned the smile as he pulled his own chair out.

“That woman’s a firecracker. Never gave up on you.”

“I hope I wouldn’t, either.” Lara held her breath a moment. “Detective, I really wasn’t kidnapped. I don’t know what the legal proceedings are to get someone who’s been wrongfully imprisoned out of jail, but I hope you’ll help me. He hasn’t actually been convicted yet, right? So maybe it’s not too hard?”

Washington lifted an eyebrow. “Well, if you can convince me, that’ll help when we bring it to a judge. Where did you say you’d gone?”

“I didn’t.”

The words fell flat, Washington’s mouth thinning as it became clear that was all Lara would say. “Ms. Jansen, we scoured a tristate area. We studied every security tape, every Greyhound station, every car rental agency, every airport, and found nothing. No activity on credit cards or bank accounts, no sightings at Seven-eleven convenience stores, no hitchhiking encounters. Children disappear that way, Ms. Jansen. People with no links, no friends, no family, disappear that way. People like you don’t.”

“All evidence to the contrary.”

The detective beat a rhythm on his desk, then nodded. “All evidence to the contrary. You disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Lara spread her hands, a thread of amusement working its way through her. “That’s what the media outside said, too, and I’m content to leave it at that.” She softened her tone as irritation darkened Washington’s face. “I know you want answers, Detective. I think you even deserve them, but I also know you wouldn’t like the ones I have to give. Not knowing might eat at you, but if I told you anything, you’d think I was lying, and that would only make you angrier. You won’t believe me, but you’ll be happier if you just let the whole thing go.”

“You practice this story, you and Kirwen? He said damned near the same thing when we arrested him.”

“I imagine detectives have to be pretty good judges of character. Either we practiced, or we’re independently telling the truth. You make the call.”

Curiosity sparked in Washington’s eyes. “You’re not quite what I expected, Ms. Jansen. Everyone I talked to, even your mother, described you as shy. Nonassertive. Given that kind of billing, I’d say you just read me the riot act.”

“It’s been seventeen months, Detective Washington.” Seventeen months, or one day. Lara shrugged a little. “People change.”

“I guess so.” Washington studied her a few moments more, finally pulling a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to do with you, Ms. Jansen. Never had a kidnapping victim turn up and say no, sorry, didn’t happen. If I had, I’d expect her to have an explanation. Without one—”

“With or without one,” Lara said steadily, “with my reappearance, you have no reason to hold David Kirwen. I’ve read news stories every once in a while about how people who were supposedly murdered have reappeared, and the person convicted of killing them has been released. How is this any different?”

“They usually have an explanation for where they’ve been. A story that checks out.”

“And if I don’t? Does that negate the fact that I’m here, healthy, and will swear in court that I wasn’t kidnapped?”

Washington scowled. “No, it doesn’t, but I don’t like it, and neither will anybody else. You’d better be damned sure about being willing to take that oath, Ms. Jansen. You’re going to have to.”